


tonic for our souls

by thelostcolony



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:35:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24584665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelostcolony/pseuds/thelostcolony
Summary: Christmas-themed prompts for my good friend MaggieJames, featuring Benjamin Tallmadge and the various relationships he has with different characters."Christmas is a tonic for our souls. It moves us to think of others rather than of ourselves. It directs our thoughts to giving." - B. C. Forbes
Relationships: Benjamin Tallmadge & His Dragoons, Benjamin Tallmadge/Mary Floyd Tallmadge, Caleb Brewster & Benjamin Tallmadge, John André & Benjamin Tallmadge, Selah Strong & Samuel Tallmadge
Kudos: 7





	1. all the way home I'll be warm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [majorxwriteyxboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/majorxwriteyxboy/gifts).



> I'm reposting this into a multi-chapter fic! This is for my dear friend Maggie, who has stuck with me through thick and thin! This is just a little Christmas present to her to express my love and appreciation for her and everything she's done for me ! Here's to many years of friendship and many more to come ! <3

> _“Well the fire is slowly dying,_
> 
> _and my dear,_
> 
> _we’re still goodbying…_
> 
> _but as long as you love me so...”_
> 
> _-Let It Snow, Dean Martin_

Ever since she was a child, she’s loved the stars.

Their glow had been irresistible to her. No one could tell her why they shone, or why they changed sometimes, or why there were shapes in the sky. She always used to reach for them, make her hand into a fist, and bring it down to whisper to her cupped palm. She always thought she’d captured a star, and had then wished upon it. She’d always fallen in love with things out of her reach.

She falls in love with him.

It’s hard not to, she reasons with herself. He’s charmingly naïve, all awkward glances and shy smiles when they first meet. _You’ve never done this before,_ she claims, and she knows it’s true from the flush to his cheeks and the purse to his lips. She finds him endearing in a way she’s never found anyone.

And then, instead of deciding to stumble through a coupling anyway, he asks her for a game of chess. And when she beats him not once, not twice, but three times, he looks more enamored with her than he had while she was on his lap.

So of course, of course… she falls in love with him.

André knows. She thinks that there’s very little that André doesn’t know - and in any case, for all Ben may be a spymaster he has an awful poker face. She thinks that André, as skilled in deduction as he is, can read Ben like an open book.

And as the weeks blur as they pass and she and Ben talk and play chess and laugh together, and André keeps paying her and paying her without fail… looking back, she thinks maybe André knew sooner than she had.

She thinks maybe André read her, too. Found the love there.

She’s sitting beside the fire, across from Benjamin and his lined face (Major Tallmadge has long since become Benjamin has long since become _Ben_ , but she likes his name and the way it sounds on her lips). The chess set is between them, his eyes focused on the pieces in a way that tells her he’s trying to focus himself fully in the moment. That usually means a bad day - a bad night. If the dark purple circles around his eyes couldn’t have told her of his restlessness, then the single minded focus on the board does; he’s fighting one of the demons in his head.

She’s seen glimpses of the wounds, of course. It would have been hard not to, considering he can barely move even after weeks of recovery. He’s swaddled in bandages like a child, face dappled in half healed scrapes. When he moves, he does so deliberately.

She knows, deep down, that he was tortured. She’s never asked him, and he’s never provided the information, and André, for his part, hasn’t confided anything beyond Ben’s name. There’s something about asking, about requesting him to share the deepest part of himself, that seems taboo - like maybe they live in a world where the war doesn’t matter. In this little room, on opposite sides of a chess set, they exist only to each other, and all thoughts of the outside world seem small and insignificant.

Looking at him now, aglow in the firelight, Mary thinks she can understand how she fell in love without realizing. She thinks she can understand how, even now, she’s falling in love and not even knowing it. Every time she says goodbye to him, she feels a pang in her chest, an emptiness that only grows with every step she takes away. It’s why she’s still visiting - why she would still visit even if André decided to retract his payment.

Benjamin shines radiantly in the amber lighting, like a star.

And Mary has always had a dear love for things out of her reach.


	2. come, adore on bended knee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tag to the first episode. Ben ruminates on the dragoons he's lost today... the friends he'll no longer see.

> _“Angels we have heard on high,_
> 
> _Sweetly singing o'er the plains;_
> 
> _And the mountains in reply,_
> 
> _Echoing their joyous strains._
> 
> _Angels we have heard on high,_
> 
> _Sweetly, sweetly through the night;_
> 
> _And the mountains in reply,_
> 
> _Echoing their brief delight.”_
> 
> _-Angels We Have Heard On High, various artists_

He remembers the smells more than anything.

Gunpowder and the copper of blood. The smell of rotting bodies. The snow on the ground. The chill in the air. He can even smell the urine of one of the Queen’s Rangers as he relieves himself.

There’s so much that’s crystallized in his memory, like his mind had frozen and absorbed every minute detail---every last component of the scene. He can recall with perfect clarity what the Queen’s Ranger had looked like as he died, skewered on the bayonet that Ben was wielding. He remembers his fallen Dragoons, each of his men — his _friends —_ lifeless in the dirt, like puppets with cut strings. Remembers the wet squelch of their bodies being defiled even in death…

He blinks, but the images stay burned behind his eyes. He sees them every time he closes them. His shoulder throbs in time with his heart, but doesn’t hurt nearly as much as those phantom images do.

The mad dash through the forest is where things go blurry. Adrenaline had been pumping; Rogers’ men had been chasing after him like mad dogs; bullets were ricocheting off trees, splintering bark with frightening ease.

He can see Rogers lurking in every shadowed corner. Can hear him in every rustle of cloth, every footstep that echoes. He’s infamous; Ben knows of his reputation well. He won’t be happy that one of his prey have escaped.

He won’t rest until Ben is dead.

And on Ben’s part — he won’t be hiding. Not after his dragoons were slaughtered like animals, left askew to rot beneath the snow, plucked at by vultures. Not after that chase through the forest, Rogers’ laughter howling in his ears like a wolf’s.

Scott had instructed him to rest. To recuperate, to recover. Ben knows well that he’s the only survivor of the skirmish — knows that with intelligence, they could have avoided this. Could have avoided the pass altogether where Rogers was lurking. And still, _still_ Scott refuses to listen. Simply tells Ben to keep his head down, to rest. _Recover_ , was the word he insisted upon.

Recovery is a foreign word.

How… unfair. Unjust. Ben doesn’t get to recover, doesn’t get to move on when his dragoons can’t. When his dragoons are still trapped in that muddy clearing, sinking into the soil and rotting from their insides out, left for dead without even a proper burial. Ben doesn’t get to escape when his dragoons have no chance.

Staring at the top of the tent, sleep continues to elude him. He tosses and turns and tries to get comfortable on his cot, his thoughts keeping him awake more than the pain in his shoulder. He can’t lie down without imagining himself waking on his back, a Queen’s Ranger only a scarce few feet away and skewering one of his men. He can hear it; taste it; smell it.

Finally, after an indeterminate amount of time spent brooding, he sits up.

He lowers himself to his knees and instantly begins to feel some of the tension in his body ebb away. He folds his hands in a movement he remembers from childhood, long ingrained in him, and tucks them under his chin.

He spends the rest of the night on his knees, hands folded together, praying and remembering.


	3. cup of cheer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The man that was returned to him during the prisoner exchange wasn't the same Ben that Caleb had known. It's hard to think about. It's harder to witness.
> 
> But tonight, Caleb catches a glimpse of the boy Ben once could have been. Sure, it's flirting with that pretty prostitute he met at Andre's... but Caleb's not a man with many scruples. Whatever makes Ben smile makes Caleb happy.
> 
> And good golly, does Mary Floyd make Ben smile.

> _“O ho,_
> 
> _The mistletoe,_
> 
> _hung where you can see!_
> 
> _Somebody waits for you —_
> 
> _kiss her once for me!”_
> 
> _-Holly Jolly Christmas, various artists_

It’s good to see Ben smiling. It makes something foreign and nostalgic ache somewhere in the region of Caleb’s chest.

Perhaps it’s because he has trouble reconciling the Ben of Now with the Ben from Before — the Ben that Caleb has always known. That Ben was naïve, stubborn, and frustratingly dull. Nigh impossible to coax into mischief, but happy to partake all the same. That’s the Ben of Caleb’s childhood; of Caleb’s memory.

That Ben is a ghost. Long dead, long treasured. Irrevocably changed.

But Caleb would rather a ghost than a memory. 

It’s good to see this Ben smiling all the same. Caleb has seldom seen him smile since his return from André’s captivity, beaten and bruised and stiff as he stumbled his way into Caleb’s arms. Caleb had thought, then, that Ben’s pallor was simply because he hadn’t seen the sun, stuck inside André’s prison of a house. He’d thought fleetingly that maybe Ben had been kept in a cellar, chained like a dog. But André is a gentleman if nothing else.

Perhaps part of Caleb had _hoped_ that was the case — that Ben was pale and drawn because he hadn’t seen sunlight or breathed fresh air. He’d hoped maybe it was something that could be fixed with time and exposure. Something that Caleb himself could help fix.

Of course, then he’d seen the marks on Ben’s back. Hope, then, had seemed very distant; felt cruel even to his subconscious touch. To hope that Ben had been chained in a cellar was bad enough. To _wish_ that it had been the case was entirely another thing.

The quiet, cheerful boy of Caleb’s memory was dead between one heartbeat and the next.

In that moment, Caleb had doubted he’d ever see Ben smile again. There was no way to come back from all the damage that had been wrought upon Ben, no way to recover fully. A piece of Ben would always be tied to a post, lashed over and over and over again. There was nothing Caleb could do about it — no amount of fetching Ben from rivers or having his back in skirmishes could fix what happened while Caleb wasn’t there.

“Caleb?”

He jolts, spilling his glass of Madeira (broken out for the occasion and taken only out of courtesy). Mary stands before him holding her own glass, eyes wide and concerned.

“Caleb, oh goodness! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Ah, s’alright,” he says, and glances down at the growing stain on the shirt he’d nicked from Ben. It won’t come out (Madeira rarely does), but Caleb thinks that it’s not as big a deal to Ben as it once would have been, all things considered. “Benny’s gonna have a right fit, though. This was his best shirt.”

Mary’s eyes flit from Caleb’s face to the stain and back again. “I’m sure he won’t mind,” she says, and the way she says it makes it all too clear that she’s thinking along the same lines. “I came to talk to you, mostly, I didn’t mean to disturb you. You were looking unusually pensive. Ben told me to come over here before you hurt yourself.” Her voice turns teasing.

Caleb smirks a little, though he feels sort of like doing the opposite. “So kind of him, to think of little ol’ me. Especially when you’re in the room.” He earns a blush for his efforts. “Say ---h as he caught you under the mistletoe yet?”

“I,” interrupts Ben as he steps from the crowd and into the little corner they’re gathered in, “am a gentleman, Brewster, and do not _catch_ women. At least not like you do.”

“That doesn’t mean they don’t want to be,” Caleb says, and winks in Mary’s direction. She laughs, a little helplessly, and threads her arm through Ben’s. Ben, for his part, is pale but content looking, looking down at Mary with stars in his eyes.

Idiot, Caleb thinks fondly for a moment, but his brain reroutes and reminds him of why it’s so good to see Ben smiling in the first place. To see Ben be love-struck, and naive, and boyish. 

It won’t last past the night. Hell, it may even last him the full night. His glass of Madeira is still filled to the brim, and he already looks tired of conversation and crowd.

But he looks at Mary and his expression lightens a little. And that’s all Caleb wants for Ben.

“Go on,” he says, and they both turn to look at him like they’d forgotten he was there. “Go find a quiet hallway. I’ll cover for you if anyone comes lookin’.” Ben graces him with a smile and the tiniest of laughs. It makes Caleb’s insides glow. “Kiss her once for me,” he continues, and if Mary smiles at him knowingly as she leads Ben away to some quiet hallway where they’ll likely talk and calm down rather than snog like teenagers, well.

Ben will still come back smiling, and that’s all that matters.


	4. if only in my dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam's so cold.
> 
> He wishes he were home.
> 
> He wants to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I did research on Presbyterian Christmas customs, and some Presbyterians do practice Christmas in a very loose sense of the term! So I took some artistic license here. I hope you enjoy; if there's any aspect of this I can improve on, please let me know!

> _“I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love_
> 
> _Even more than I usually do..._
> 
> _And although I know_
> 
> _it's a long road back,_
> 
> _I promise you:_
> 
> _I'll be home for Christmas._
> 
> _You can count on me.”_
> 
> _-I’ll Be Home For Christmas, as sung by Michael Buble_

The sounds of coughing and labored breathing are the only things that echo down in the belly of the ship, and he curls up more firmly against the warm body beside his. His hands are frigid against his own skin, tucked under his arms in an attempt to warm his stiff fingers. He’s long since lost the feeling in his toes, and he can’t feel his nose or the tips of his ears anymore. He smushes the left side of his face against a bony shoulder, cheekbone aching for the cold, and the body beside him shivers in response. His own body has long since forgotten to shiver, lying stagnant and still in an attempt to conserve energy. He wonders what day it is. He wonders when last he prayed. He wonders if it’s Christmas yet, if his family has gone to the old church still or if the war has driven them from it, has forced them to finally stop practicing their mother’s tradition…

His body shudders. He leans closer to the faint warmth beside him, nudging against a limp arm.

“Selah,” he whispers, a hoarse sound, and the man beside him shifts like he’s coming back to life, joints stiff and unmoving. “Selah,” he repeats, trying to quell the sudden flush of panic that’s beginning to overtake him, body finally shuddering at the thought of being alone, at the thought of — 

“I’m here,” Selah’s voice, roughened from sleep and hours of silence, comes from over his head. Limbs creak as he moves; he must be numb. “I’m here, Sam.”

Sam doesn’t know for how much longer, but he’ll take the small comfort that Selah’s presence gives him. People come and go on the _Jersey —_ but they usually come in alive. It happens every day; new people come, new people give up. Especially in this cold.

He remembers one winter when he nearly froze to death out in the snow. It had been the Christmas after Ben had found him and John shoved in a closet to cry together, after their father had bundled them up and taken them to church to help them mourn their mother. Samuel had been a whole year older — too old to cry, he’d determined — and instead of shoving himself into the broom closet like John and Isaac did, he had gone for a trek in the snow.

He’d gotten himself turned around in the woods behind their house, something that had seemed impossible at the time it happened and completely infeasible to Sam. He’d spent his childhood marching through those woods; snow or rain or sunshine, he knew them like the back of his hand.

But he’d gotten lost. It was snowing, and he was cold, and his boot prints had disappeared as fast as he’d made them. So he’d sat down in the snow and, in spite of himself, he’d cried.

William had come looking for him, then. Sam had been curled up beneath a fallen log, blanketed by the freshly fallen snow, and William had all but tripped over him. Hoisted into William’s arms like a baby, Sam had never felt more small nor helpless, shoving his face into the side of William’s neck, snot and tears and all. 

William hadn’t complained. He’d followed his own, deeper boot prints out of the woods and back into their house, where Ben was fussing with a fire and blankets and Isaac and John had been newly fetched from their broom closet. Sam had been swaddled in front of the hearth, Ben and William on both sides and Isaac and John half on his lap, waiting for Father to come home to take them to Christmas Mass. There hadn't been any sound; no one had spoken. But Sam, in all his years since, had never felt as warm or as comforted as he had then.

For just a second, he closes his eyes and he’s there. Selah’s body morphs into William’s; the colder body on his other side, long since having stopped moving, turns into Ben. The shoulder his face is buried in his William’s, like he’d tucked his face into William’s neck that night. Isaac and John are on his lap, and that’s why his legs are numb.

It’s dangerous to sleep. Sam knows the importance of staying awake, of moving every so often to bring back the feeling in his limbs. But he doesn’t want to disturb Isaac or John, and he’s warm, curled up next to William and Ben.

He closes his eyes and thinks of warm Christmases by the fire and the comfort of his siblings by the hearth, and falls asleep.


	5. in grateful chorus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Christmas Eve, and Ben is a captive at Major Andre's.
> 
> He can't help but think of his loved ones.

> _“O, Holy Night,_
> 
> _the stars are brightly shining -_
> 
> _it is the night of our dear savior’s birth._
> 
> _Long lay the world_
> 
> _in sin and error pining_
> 
> _‘til he appeared,_
> 
> _and the soul felt its worth._
> 
> _A thrill of hope,_
> 
> _the weary world rejoices_
> 
> _for yonder breaks_
> 
> _a new and glorious morn!_
> 
> _fall on your knees,_
> 
> _hear the angels’ voices:_
> 
> _O night divine.”_
> 
> _-O Holy Night, as sung by Zachary Levi_

Ben’s mother had always insisted on Christmas.

His father, as a Presbyterian, had never participated in the holiday tradition of Christmas. Ben could remember early in his childhood, when his parents had thought he was asleep and Sam was pressed tightly against him, the argument that had broken out between his mother and father. He couldn’t have been older than five, for he could remember Sam being very small in his arms and he himself being very small in William’s, whose chin was pressed against the crown of his head. When he’d looked back upon it, Ben had realized that William had been awake too, but hadn’t dared speak should their parents, seemingly all-knowing at the time, hear him and come to see why he was awake.

Still, he remembers the debate clearly: his mother had wanted them to at least observe Epiphany, but his father had steadfastly refused. They had compromised; his mother would bring them to their father’s empty church on Christmas Eve every year after that until her death, where they would pray for as long as she deemed was appropriate before they were permitted gifts the following day. 

It had never been a flashy affair; his father had, of course, been against it, grudgingly following his wife’s wishes in observance, and upon reflection Ben thought perhaps his father was expecting to have to host parties and attend church with her and bow in prayer. But that was never the case. His mother had been quiet about it, as per her nature, and had seemed entirely content to do so without the gatherings that the Woodhulls hosted for Epiphany or the Christmas Mass that the few Roman Catholics in Setauket attended. Private prayer and worship was what had seemed most important to her, and Ben himself liked the quiet, liked the ability to be able to communicate with God privately on a day widely considered collective. 

When she died, her children had believed that that was the end of the tradition, the end of their Christmas celebration. December was a solemn affair; Isaac, the youngest of them, couldn’t understand why she was no longer around to take them to the church to pray or to do any of their quiet Christmas activities, and John and Samuel were pale and sickly looking. They denied it, of course, and refused comfort on top of it. Not two hours later Ben had found the two of them in a broom closet, where they’d shoved themselves so they could cry privately.

Ben had never thought that his father had found out about that — he had sworn to Samuel and John he wouldn’t tell anyone, and he had been the only one truly searching. But when December 24th rolled around, his father had bundled them up in gruff silence, refused to answer their inquiries as to where they were going, and had seen them off to church. And he had bowed his head and prayed for as long as he deemed appropriate, and rose and guided his children back home, special care taken to hug Samuel and John to his sides even though he’d remained silent throughout the whole of the affair.

And that had been how it proceeded.

The tradition had stopped before Ben had gone away to Yale, but the thoughtfulness of his father had always remained with him. The memory of his father bundling his younger brothers into winter coats, observing a tradition he’d long since hated, had resonated deeply inside Ben, and couldn’t be shaken by time alone.

He hadn’t thought about it often since then, his schooling and then the Revolution absorbing much of his thoughts, but with the sudden abundance of free time he has Ben does nothing but think. He tries to think about anything but what’s really plaguing him, the memories too raw and close to the surface for him to truly examine. They hurt more than his physical wounds do.

Pondering is a dangerous thing to do, particularly in helpless situations as these, but Ben finds he can do little else. Chess is only intriguing when Mary is there to banter with, and dinner is always a slightly awkward, stilted affair as he and André tiptoe and dance around topics that may strike too close to home — wherever _home_ may be. They never speak of the war, and Ben thinks that asking would go over poorly, so they stick mainly to topics that both of them share some knowledge in — usually theatre, schooling, or philosophy. Ben shares what he knew of invention from Sackett, which André seems to find incredibly fascinating, and in turn Ben is introduced to the trinkets that Mr. Franklin left behind after his mission to France. Neither of them speak of said mission. 

It’s a careful dance they partake in. One misstep feels as though it could ruin the whole routine.

Perhaps that’s why Ben sticks to thoughts that are safer — thoughts that aren’t about Abe or the ring or even the war. He tries desperately not to think of Caleb, and if he does it’s always about their childhood adventures. The coat stays with him, draped over his arm or his shoulders; that’s something Ben can’t seem to force himself to give up. He feels stronger with it in his possession, like Caleb himself is standing next to him and advising him on what to do. It makes him feel less lonely. He can only imagine Caleb’s teasing about Ben being a captured damsel.

The snow is tumbling past the window with outstanding speed. It lands and sticks, and Ben watches two inches, five inches accumulate before he hears a knock that finally breaks the spell he’s under.

It’s André — of course it is. His face is carefully polite, and Ben can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking. It’s something that plagues him constantly: this worry that André is somehow judging him, weighing him. The two of them had been in a different game before Ben’s capture and subsequent torture; a strike here, a parry there. Ben had been both amazed and disgruntled by André’s skill as an intelligence agent, and for his part can’t help but wonder what he may seem like to André — before, and now.

Pondering is dangerous. 

“I don’t wish to disturb you,” André begins. “But Abigail has made a lovely Christmas Eve dinner, and I was wondering if you’d be so inclined to join.”

Christmas Eve. Right. Thus was why Ben was so absorbed in thoughts of his mother.

Ben has never been an impulsive man. Stubborn and intuitive, yes. Quick to action? Definitely. But nothing was done without being weighed first, without Ben considering the pros and cons and possible downfalls and triumphs of each decision. He could do so quickly, particularly under pressure; that was what had saved his life, and the lives of his men, on countless occasions. In André’s presence, though, it never seemed to happen fast enough.

“...Of course,” he finally answers, and a good beat of silence has passed. André, for his part, has been waiting patiently this whole time, something that Ben can’t hope to understand. Is the man simply unerringly polite enough to allow Ben a moment to formulate a thought, or does he think Ben a simpleton? Worse, does he feel _pity_ for Ben? 

It’s not worth thinking about; not now, when the day has been… difficult. It’s not a bad day, Ben’s already decided it isn’t. But it’s certainly not a _present_ day.

“I’ll meet you in the dining room, then,” André says, and smiles a little as he leaves. Ben watches him go, unsure if this is a kindness or an end to the man’s patience or both.

He rises slowly, and looks out the window again. At this rate, they’ll have a foot of snow by morning. The Continental Camp will be freezing; they’re stationed in Morristown, and last Ben had known they’d been running short on supplies.

...But that’s not something worth thinking about. Not now. It’s not a good day for that.

But maybe it is a good day to meet André in the dining room. André, to Ben’s understanding, is Roman Catholic; they speak often of philosophy, but never of theology. Maybe they can discuss some of it over the table. 

Ben knows a thing or two about Catholic tradition.


End file.
